


a shot in the dark (your soul is on fire)

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 15:06:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8061136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: Jemma is sadly accustomed to pain.





	

**Author's Note:**

> anonymous said "biospecialist + hand kiss" and I meant to write a drabble, but then it got out of hand. Oops.
> 
> I'm behind on comment replies again, sorry! I'll attempt to catch up this weekend.
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

To her concern (and regret), Jemma is fairly accustomed to pain.

Though she’s never been clumsy or prone to injury, she unfortunately can’t say the same for her soulmate, whoever he or she might be.  For as long as she can remember, she’s suffered through phantom pains, magnified echoes of whatever her soulmate experiences—and her soulmate experiences a great many pains.

On the rare occasions she allows herself to consider it, she sincerely hopes her soulmate is a good deal older than her, and a reckless risk-taker besides. It’s the only explanation, other than the obvious, that she can think of for the frequent and awful pains she endured in her early childhood—and she most certainly doesn’t want the obvious to be the explanation.

It does seem likely, though, that he or she is simply reckless, as the phantom pains haven’t lessened. They did for a time—for nearly five years, she knew only the occasional scrape or burn—but eventually resumed and even increased. And surely if her childhood pains were a result of abuse they would have ended by now?

She can only hope.

In any case, the point is that she’s well accustomed to sudden and inexplicable pain. She’s learned to push it aside or, if that isn’t possible, to tolerate it well enough. Painkillers are sadly useless in the case of a soulmate’s echoes, and her (many) attempts to formulate a counter for phantom pains have been unsuccessful thus far. She must simply endure, and so she has.

Until one day, halfway through a debate with Fitz, she’s hit with the worst pain she’s ever felt. It’s sudden, an unexpected stabbing pain that starts just above her hip and then sears through her entire body. Her vision swims. She thinks she screams.

Then, darkness.

 

 

 

Consciousness returns slowly. She hears the beeping first, recognizes the steady beat of a heart monitor, and then feels the warmth that cocoons her. It’s nice. Soothing.

It takes her rather longer to realize that the source of the warmth is another person—a man, judging by the firm chest she’s cradled against. She’s wrapped up in his arms, resting half on her bed (no, not her bed, it’s not nearly comfortable enough) and half on him.

“Wh…?” Her voice is barely a croak; she can’t even manage a full word. She tries again. “What?”

“Shh,” the man holding her says. Jemma feels a strangely muted spike of alarm. That voice is completely unfamiliar. “You’re okay. Does it still hurt?”

For a moment, she’s puzzled, and then her mind offers up the memory of unbearable agony and sudden collapse. With the memory comes the realization that no, it _doesn’t_ hurt.

But that doesn’t make sense. Phantom pains _linger_. Even a simple scrape takes hours to fade, and the pain that so overwhelmed her was most certainly more than that. Either she’s been out for a _very_ long time, or…

Or what?

With difficulty, she forces her eyes open. Her vision is blurred, but a few blinks help, and eventually her eyes focus on the single most attractive man she’s ever seen.

“Oh,” she says weakly. “Hello?”

He smiles, just a little. “Hi.”

Attractive or not, he _is_ a stranger, and she means to ask precisely why he’s holding her when he takes her hand and raises it to his mouth. The soft kiss he presses to her knuckles sweeps through her whole being like an inverse echo of her earlier pain.

Understanding dawns. The whole world brightens with it.

“ _Oh_ ,” she breathes. “You’re—are you—?”

“I’m Grant,” he says, squeezing her hand. His other hand, she realizes, is resting over where the phantom pain began. “I’m your soulmate.”

“Hello,” she says. Giddiness rises up in her chest, bringing with it a smile she can’t stop from spreading across her face. “I’m Jemma.”

His smile widens in return, but it rings slightly false. She pushes herself up—mortifying herself by noting as she does that in addition to a lovely face, he’s in possession of a very appealing physique—to sit, thinking perhaps he’s uncomfortable with her on top of him. Of course, she can’t truly get _off_ him; they’re squished together in what she belatedly recognizes as an infirmary bed. The SHIELD eagle on the far wall is reassuring, but it only brings more questions.

Grant doesn’t follow her up, only rearranges himself against the pillows, and her apparently very tired brain suddenly snaps into gear.

“You were hurt!” she exclaims, only just stopping herself from pulling his (scrub, she realizes) shirt up to check his side. “What _happened_?”

“Got shot,” he says with a grimace, and then catches her hand. “I’m so sorry, Jemma.”

“You’re—what have you to be _sorry_ for?” she demands. “You got _shot_? Are you all right? What—”

“I should have been more careful,” he says, cutting her off. “If I’d known how bad it would be…” A muscle ticks in his jaw; his throat works silently. “I should’ve been thinking of you when I signed up for this. So I’m just…so, so sorry.”

“Signed up for what?” she asks, utterly confused. “Did you volunteer to be shot?”

Her attempt at a teasing tone is met with a humorless smile that makes her heart sink.

“In a manner of speaking,” he says. “I’m a specialist.”

“You—oh.”

Well. That does put something of a spin on it, doesn’t it? Her first thought is to be glad he’s a SHIELD agent; that will make things easier for them. But when she actually considers it—takes into account what she knows of specialists—she finds his apology makes rather more sense.

The specialist career track is one of SHIELD’s most dangerous. By placing himself on it, he’s been putting _both_ of them at risk. It isn’t just gunshots he’s exposed himself—and, by extension, Jemma—to; it’s no secret that specialists are the agents most likely to be tortured for intelligence.

…Wait.

“Don’t you take the suppressants?” she asks, more than a little wounded by the idea that he might _not_.

SHIELD has specially designed drugs for exactly this reason; she helped improve their design herself. The whole point of the suppressants is to dull the connection between soulmates, to reduce the risk of a specialist’s (or any field agent’s, really) soulmate being exposed to their work. The effect only works one way, which is why she hasn’t been able to use the suppressants to fend off her own phantom pains, but to know that he had access to them all this time…

“No, I do,” he says urgently. He starts to sit up, only to collapse back against his pillow with a bitten off curse, and Jemma forgets her own hurt at once.

“Be _careful_!” she scolds, looking uselessly around. “Are you all right? Do you need a doctor? More morphine? There’s meant to be a button, isn’t there?”

“I’m fine,” Grant says. It would be rather more convincing if his voice weren’t so strained. “Jemma, I take the suppressants, I promise. I would never—I was undercover and I ran out, that’s all. My assignment ran long and I got made before I could contact my handler for more, and then…well…”

“Then you got shot,” she says, understanding. “That’s hardly your fault—”

“It _is_ my fault,” he corrects. “I should’ve brought more—or just not’ve gotten fucking _shot_.”

“Well, I’d certainly appreciate it if you avoided it in the future,” she says, delighting in the reluctant smile it gets out of him. “But it’s not your fault, Grant, really. I’m just glad you’re _alive_.”

She knows what _made_ means in the context of undercover work, after all, and she’s seen enough spy films to know that it could have been much, much worse than single (albeit horrifically painful) gunshot. He may well have been _killed_ —dead before she even met him. She would have felt the pain of whatever killed him, and then it would have stopped, and she’d have never felt anything from him again.

Just the thought makes her heart hurt.

“Me, too,” Grant says softly.

He’s still holding her hand, but suddenly, it’s not enough. Without stopping to second-guess herself, she scoots down to curl into his uninjured side once more, wrapping herself around him as though she can ward off even the thought of death.

The move seems to take him by surprise; he’s very still for a moment. Then he pulls her close, burying his face in her hair and dragging in a deep breath. If it sounds a bit shaky…well, they don’t truly know one another well enough for her to point it out, do they?

For now, she can only hope her presence is comfort enough. _His_ presence is, for her; it would be nice if that went both ways.

She has questions for him, of course. About his work, about _him_ —there are things she wants to know about him and things she wants him to know about _her_. But they have their whole lives ahead of them to get acquainted (and, she dares hope, to fall in love), after all. What matters is that her soulmate is here, alive if not well, and that he’s holding her like he means never to let go.

In the moment, this is plenty.

“It’s nice to meet you, Grant,” she says into his shoulder. His quiet laugh fills her heart with something indescribable.

“Nice to meet you, too, Jemma.”


End file.
